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I am surprised, but not shocked, by my friend Evan Bayh's retirement. The timing, of course, is jarring-- it really does make it difficult for a Democrat starting this late and with no fundraising base. But I doubt very much that there is anything calculating about the timing. Ending one's career in the Senate is a very personal thing. I am sure this was a tough decision for Evan and Susan to make, and you announce it when you make it. But it will cause some harsh feelings among other Democrats, in the Senate and in Indiana. And if the nightmare scenario actually ensues-- a fringe candidate gets enough petitions to qualify for the Democratic nomination while no other Democrat can before the deadline-- expect the equivalent of a nuclear explosion against Bayh from his colleagues.

I am not shocked at the retirement for two reasons. The first is the one Evan mentioned in his announcement. The Senate has become a much more nasty and brutish place, where too many forces conspire to block senators from working across party lines to try to solve problems even when they want to. And Evan Bayh wants to.

The second, which is related, is that Bayh was a very successful governor before coming to the Senate. Governors often have a hard time adjusting to a body where decisions are collective; legislative coalition-building is not the same as executive decision-making. There are other compensations, but when those compensations begin to wane, the Senate loses a lot of its appeal. Add to that the lack of appeal in a bruising, non-stop year of campaigning into a headwind for a Democrat in a still-reddish state, combined with a heavy Senate schedule and two teenage sons, and the retirement becomes no less painful but much more understandable.

It's interesting to see Republicans crow with delight over the departure of Evan Bayh from the Senate, seeing it as nothing more than another opportunity for a Republican to take his seat. Do Republicans really believe that in their very public obstruction of a president who does represent the center--certainly, he is no flaming liberal--they will gain the long term upper hand in making policy in the rest of the second decade of the 21st century?

If so they are sadly mistaken. The silent center left majority sees what is happening and will remember. And when their turn comes, they will support undermining Congress and/or the White House when it is led by someone from the other side of the aisle. Do Republicans really believe that if they win back the Congress and even the presidency, that there will be no payback from elected Democrats who will be in the minority party at that time? Isn't it likely that such Democrats will do to the Republicans exactly what they have done to the Democrats--derail, block, and torpedo every effort to enact legislation? Then, we will hear Republicans arguing for bipartisanship, and Democrats defending their attacks as the holy fight for what is right. Why is it that Republicans so often mention the Bible but fail to heed one of its most important prophecies--as you sow, so shall you reap?

There is an American tragedy being written in these events, but nobody in Congress, certainly not Bayh, possesses the courage to fight to uphold the American center under attack.

For those of us old enough to remember the post-World War II period, one of its distinguishing characteristics was that an American political center existed, as Arthur Schlesinger put it, that, while rent as it was by racism and gender oppression, demanded that national leaders who disagreed about particular policies rein in their vitrol in order to preserve a place of rational discourse for consensus formation. Disagreements over particular policies were muted because of the larger conflict against a larger foe--the Soviet Union and its attempt destroy the United States through a war that was simultaneously hot and Cold. That some Republicans feel it is ok to attack every policy decision of a sitting president in a global struggle against terrorism, and that their views are aired in the mainstream media puts the lie to the argument that we are in a real war. For if we were, those voices would be silent; and when aired, they would be aired behind closed doors. For if nothing else, the postwar fight against Communism and the Soviet bloc dampened partisanship and created a space for a broad consensus on foreign policy, at least, to emerge that suppressed, though it did not completely eliminate, the kind of vicious partisanship that exists today.

Now, there is no such break on self-aggrandizing partisan attacks, as the careers of Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, and a host of media darlings attest. And their emergence signifies that the center has collapsed, so that now there is no place in American politics where new ideas can be debated and discussed without its participants being blindsided by self-interested hyperbole and politically motivated character assassinations. And as the center collapses, so does the ability of the nation to take on the challenges that it must face if it is to continue to be the dominant force in the world. There may have been more partisanship in the past, but it has never been more paralyzing at a time when the nation faced so many challenges that need our rational problem-solving attention.

So undermined is the notion of a political center that partisans can't even countenance that a distinction exists between what is in the best interest of the party and what is in the best interest of the nation. This blindness reveals the deeper work that partisanship does--to allow people to deny the existence of real problems that transcend party solution. In that sense, partisanship serves to worsen a problem Americans have always struggled with--to be open to self-criticism, to take it to heart, and to begin the process of creating a new national political will to enact difficult changes and make the profound sacrifices we need to make as a nation. That kind of social, cultural, psychological work cannot take place in an environment in which people of good will are routinely attacked if not politically destroyed because they raise an unusual or unpopular idea, that, perhaps, on further investigation, might be the one that will meet the pressing need.

So the public political culture goes, and the Bayh withdrawal from Congress serves as another example of the want of political courage in the current moment.

Buh-Bayh: godspeed to Evan Bayh, who punctuates a longtime record of making a difference for people with his decision that there is more to public service than public office. Who comes next? My optimal choice is overseas - current US Ambassador to India and former Congressman/9-11 Commissioner Tim Roemer. Since Roemer is in India not Indiana, the most intriguing Democratic challenger is John Mellencamp (the Facebook "Draft John" effort is underway) while the most intriguing Republican challenge is to use the VA-NJ 2009 model and avoid a primary.

Evan Bayh is part of the glue that holds an increasingly polarized place like the U.S. Senate together. My old boss in my Senate days, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was fond of saying that “a principal question of American democracy is whether the center can hold.” Centrism is not much in fashion these days but the lack of it is wrecking our country. I know Senator Bayh is right that he can make some outstanding contribution outside of the Senate – in commerce, academia or charity. But his departure will further diminish an institution that is not so much any longer the world’s greatest deliberative body.

I am shocked, shocked.....usually this is said in sarcasm -- from the line in the movie Casablanca to most Washington events that really cease to shock. But this one comes as a very big surprise and should engender more than the typical political horse race analysis.

If what Evan is saying about the political environment in Washington is truly the reason for his departure, and I believe it is, that should mean something to people on both sides of the aisle. This is not the same Senate that his father served in for 18 years, this is not the same public service career that Evan signed up for at age 30. Partisan gridlock, vitriol dripping from nearly every press release, 60 votes accepted to rename a post office in the U.S. Senate, serious problems swept under the rug because Congress can not function -- this is not a blip, this is a sad commentary on our politics. When will the current crop of elected representatives realize that the public is truly fed up with their inability to solve the health care crisis, attack the deficit, create an economic climate that creates good paying jobs, improve out education system, the list goes on and on.

Of course these aren't easy, of course they will take time and real effort, of course they will be hotly debated and discussed. But, after all, why did these folks run for office in the first place? Hopefully, not simply to get reelected again and again, with little to show for the personal sacrifice and tough campaigns.

Evan Bayh's decision to retire has to shock Democrats, and delight Republicans. Bayh was the clear favorite to hold the Indiana Senate seat, and with him gone, the seat has to be found to lean Republican. With an anti-incumbency mood on the rise, and with a significant number of Democratic retirements in both the House and the Senate, the chances for large Republican gains--if not an outright takeover of Congress--in the midterm elections, is growing. Bayh's retirement only serves to help the Republican cause.

I wish Bayh well, but I have to laugh about the concerns regarding "increased partisanship" in Washington. First of all, partisanship is not nearly as bad as it was in the past. Secondly, to the extent that there is partisanship, perhaps some of it stems from the fact that upon their takeover of Congress in 2007, Democrats began to push Republicans out of the policymaking process, promises to the contrary notwithstanding.

Evan Bayh said he is retiring because partisanship has made governing too difficult, but I think there is another reason for his melancholic disengagement: our nation's short-term and long-term fiscal predicament has become too difficult. Government isn't fun anymore, now that we've already spent all there is to spend, plus all there is to borrow. No new entitlements because the old ones consume too much. No new taxes because the old ones are already high enough to slow the economic growth needed to pay what we already owe. No new social solutions because it requires first saying no to someone before we can say yes to someone else. When governing can no longer be about spending more, even centrist Democrats retire.

It's too bad that someone of Senator Bayh's calibre feels that Congress no longer offers an opportunity to best contribute to society. I guess he's hit a kind-of political glass ceiling -- unappreciated, and no where to go in his own party due to his more moderate leanings. Democrats will continue to bleed if their leadership continues down not only their partisan course, but their liberal partisan course. As the party's leader, President Obama is to blame. He has the power to set the tone and provide some structure to legislative endeavors, but has not yet provided the leadership.

Senator Bayh’s decision to retire is a stunning blow to Senate Democrats and the Obama Administration. It moves a seat which was leaning Democrat or a toss up to the leaning Republican pick up column. This is a real boost to GOP hopes for regaining a majority in the Senate. Republicans now need only to recruit strong Senate candidates for the two New York seats and in Wisconsin and Washington State to put themselves within striking distance of reclaiming the majority.

Evan Bayh's retirement is not a good sign for the future of bipartisanship. He is a centrist, and it seems that the center is not holding. If senators such as Bayh leave or lose, the rancor in Washington will get louder and meaner. Not good for the country, and not good for President Obama's agenda.

Evan Bayh's decision against seeking a third Senate term hit me like a blow to the solar plexus. Over the years I have seen many sure winners step down out of frustration with their inability to get things done, but most were members of whatever party happened to be in the minority at the time, and most had been members of the House of Representatives, where the majority determines the rule for each bill and, therefore, the fate of each item. The Senate, on the other hand, was created by God as a place of work and play for many whose egos would make them dysfunctional if forced to find gainful employment outside.

Bayh is not that sort. The son of Sen. Birch Bayh, pretty much a doctrinaire liberal, who campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, Evan Bayh ran and tried to govern from the center, both as governor of Indiana and United States Senator.But a rumored presidential quest never found much support. Most of his fellow Democrats found his centrist, good government nostrums quite boring, lending credence to the late Senator Jesse Helms' observation that the only thing likely to be found in the center of the road are dead possums.

Ironically Bayh's exit from a race he was expected to win easily comes as Dan Coats--a Hoosier who served as a member of the House and Senate before retiring for reasons sounding very much like those of Bayh--has been dropping hints he may be up for a contest against Bayh. With Bayh out, a Coates campaign and plausible Republican victory now seem to be shaping up. Even with other possible GOP pick-ups, the likelihood of the Democrats losing "control" of the Senate still seems a long-shot (6-8 seems more likely). But having shown a total lack of political technique--even with a 10 seat margin-- in dealing with GOP defensive tactics, "Bayh's Disease" may become contagious.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some major shake-up in the Democratic party ranks as a result of Senator Bayh's retirement. The bleeding continues for the Democrats, and no speech by the President is going to stop it. If I had to lay money on it, I'd say Rahm Emanuel is going to be forced out and an elder statesmen is going to be brought in to replace him. Someone like George Mitchell might make sense. He's respected on both sides of the aisle and would help calm nerves among Democrats on Capitol Hill. Moreover, to the extent health care is still a priority for the Administration, he might also help bring in the two Maine Senators and give the President something he desperately needs at this point in time -- a victory.

Anybody who says Evan Bayh is retiring because he feared being defeated by ex-Sen. Dan Coats is dead wrong. Bayh was the clear favorite in that match-up, and Coats has been damaged by the lobbying and residency revelations about him over the last couple of weeks.

And that’s why this is such a setback for Democrats. The Crystal Ball has immediately re-categorized this seat from Likely D to Toss Up, pending a clearer picture of the party nominees. 2010 is going to be a Republican year, and despite Obama’s narrow 2008 victory in Indiana, the Hoosier State is still GOP territory overall. At the very least, Democrats will have to spend big bucks to hold the seat, if they can hold it at all. The logical Democratic candidate would probably be an incumbent House member, perhaps Brad Ellsworth (age 51), Joe Donnelly (age 54), or Baron Hill (age 56). Hill has already run against Senate appointee Coats in the 1990 special election (following Sen. Dan Quayle’s resignation to become Vice President), and lost to Coats by a respectable 54% to 46%. Since Hill faces yet another tough rematch with former GOP Cong. Mike Sodrel, Hill might be especially tempted to make the run. But this is all speculation.

On the Republican side, the instant frontrunner for the nomination (and maybe the general election) is none other than former Sen. Coats. However, Coats is no longer the inevitable victor after the facts that have surfaced recently. It will be interesting to see if ex-Cong. John Hostettler (R) or a third candidate can make hay out of Coats’ difficulties. If Indianans think they are choosing the next senator in the GOP primary, they’re going to be picky—and Coats has given them a lot to pick over in his past.

Overall, Bayh’s announcement is another body blow to Democratic chances of maintaining any substantial margin in the Senate that convenes next January. A couple of more surprises like Bayh’s and we’ll all be talking about the possibility of the Democrats losing the Senate entirely—but we’re not there yet and may never be. The Crystal Ball’s estimate of a 7-seat gain for the GOP is still a reasonable one, but under ideal conditions for the GOP, it could expand to 8.

You would think that a Democratic US Senator who enjoys a majority in the Senate and a majority in the House and a President of his party, would not even consider retiring from the Senate. But, is it any wonder? The Democrats have squandered their power, opportunity and credibility this past year. At a time when most Americans were concerned with the greater economy, jobs, the deficit and uncontrolled government spending, Democrats were obsessed with health care and cap and trade legislation. The American People rejected the focus of their governance and sent a message of their dissatisfaction, when they went to the polls in 2009 & 2010 and elected Republican Governor’s in New Jersey and Virginia and electing a Republican US Senator from Massachusetts.

Senator Bayh was clearly frustrated and disappointed with his party’s leadership across the board and he did not want to be part of it any longer. I hope he considers switching party’s. Republicans should welcome him with open arms.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) urged Obama to scale back his effort on climate.

“I think this is a very difficult time, given the state of the economy,” Bayh said. “And the lack of a firm commitment on the part of other nations. That makes it more difficult. That’s not to say progress can’t be made. If I were advising the president, I would focus on energy security, job creation in the energy space that would have the additional advantage of helping to address carbon emissions but do it an economically friendly way.”

An energy-only bill doesn’t help address carbon emissions, it would only add to the budget deficit, it would be too small in scale to generate many jobs or compete with our hyper-charged competitors, who aren’t squeamish about making major investments to push clean energy and reduce emissions (see “The only way to win the clean energy race is to pass the clean energy bill“).

It’s a sad commentary on moderate Dems that they don’t even have the backbone on — or understanding of — the solution to the central issue of our time that one of the most conservative Republicans does:

Like Dorgan, let’s say for now that Bayh is 50-50 or better to vote for the final bill — and maybe higher for at least cloture. After all, what possible reason could he give to support a filibuster?

Perhaps all of the swing state senators could announce their retirement and then vote sanely — especially those who probably aren’t going to be reelected anyway. Paging Blanche Lincoln!

Finally, what exactly is the point of electing these people if they won’t act on the big issues? As Graham said:

If [the] lesson from health care is let’s not do anything hard, then why don’t we all go home, which might be good for the country by the way.

But if we go home, China won’t….

This is the time, this is the Congress, and this is the moment. So if we retreat and try to just go to the energy only approach which will never yield the legislative results that I want on energy independence, then we just made the problem worse.

What Congress is going to come up here and do all these hard things?

Who are these people in the future?

Because we constantly count on them.

I don’t know who they are. I’ve yet to find them.

So I guess it falls to me and you.

So let’s do it.

If it wasn’t clear before, it’s pretty much now or never who knows when?

Democrat Sen. Evan Bayh won his last election by 24 percent. He won that race in 2004 at the same time President Bush won the state of Indiana by a 20 point margin. So, clearly Sen. Bayh has had the ability to attract crossover votes in his career. However, I would imagine he has seen an incredible erosion in his support since President Obama took office. For someone who has never lost election, Bayh must be looking to get out of the way of the GOP tidal wave that seems increasingly likely to sweep across the country in November. There’s also a chance that he’s looking to 2012. He may be trying to position himself as a moderate, somewhat non-partisan outsider who can run against a weakened, liberal President Obama. Engaging in a deeply partisan race for reelection this year against former Sen. Dan Coats wouldn’t serve that interest.

As interesting as VP Biden/Cheney debate was, the more fascinating one would have been Gates/Cheney. There we would have seen the Bush administration's second term terror debate in full flower: Secretary Gates advocating for calm vigilance, Vice President Cheney for continuous American torture.

For all of Cheney's ability to be the Republican substance to Sarah Palin's Republican fluff, the country is fully aware of his record. During the Bush administration, more Americans were killed by terrorist attacks than at any time in U.S. history. Torturing enemy combatants has not kept Americans safe so much as having over a quarter million U.S. troops in the Middle East have. To what end that military action will lead none of us know yet-- but we do know that U.S. military forces are stretched thin and are unprepared for a third major combat situation, the nation's deficit is built on war-spreading that we couldn't afford and was never fully revealed to the public, and Iran has emerged as the major militant anti-Western power in that region. To name three consequences of our Middle East "strategy." Finally, for all the time Vice President Cheney hails American torture, much reporting shows that hardly any sort of torture took place after the Abu Ghraib photos were released. American interrogators did not want to face criminal prosecution. President Obama didn't shut down the torture program so much as Abu Ghraib forced the Bush administration to. It appears that Vice President Cheney is still arguing in favor of American torture of foreign adversaries.

At first I was going to throw up my hands in frustration at the thought of the two them doing the terrorism smackdown. But I fact I think this turned out to be a historic event. What it did was punch a hole in the myth history that has emerged since 9/11. One myth is that Cheney was some kind of "puppetmaster" of the Bush administration. On the contrary, there was vigorous debate in the Bush White House. The second lie was that just by doing "everything not Bush" defeating terrorism would be so much easier.

The truth comes out pretty clearly in this debate. It is a war. What's practical and right is defined by a rather narrow zone of action--thats pretty clear after nine years of debate.

Cheney probably appealed to those who already supported his arguments. Biden might have made a bigger splash, only in that Democrats have recently been accustomed to the administration sitting silent when critics attack. By going after Cheney and raising questions about the issues he has been repeating for months, some Democrats will feel a bit energized and less defensive. Biden also can end up opening up a debate, a potentially healthy debate, about what we need to do to improve our national security policies.

I would hate to say that former V.P. Dick Cheney continues to hold sway over the soul of our nation, but his influence should not be ignored simply because he's gone from public office.

As his appearance on ABC's "This Week" yesterday showed, Cheney continues to exert a powerful influence over our country. His unashamed argument that waterboarding should be considered for the would-be Christmas Day bomber is an example.

In a mere nine years, we've become a country in which torture is discussed without flinching in the most responsible media venues. In fact, most of the mainstream media are still hesitant to use the word "torture" - adopting the eerily inadequate term "harsh interrogation techniques" -- in deference to Cheney's personal lexicon.

Allowing Cheney to describe torture as a "technique" -- something he did again yesterday -- is another of these steps we've taken into Cheney-world. Cheney seems somehow to channel the powerful trope of the disapproving, unyielding father. The fear of angering him, or of being subjected to his withering derision has resulted in media and political acquiesence to Cheneyisms -- from the sit-down discussion in place of a Vice-Presidential debate, to the adoption of an Orwellian lexicon that undermines our integrity and flouts the rule the law.

President Obama has scolded those on the left about the wisdom of what he calls "looking back." But the unchecked and unrepentant voice of Dick Cheney is a piece of our past that continues to define who we are.

Dick Cheney and Joe Biden were a contrast in style and message this weekend – Cheney reminding independent voters what was unpopular about the Bush administration, and Biden playing the traditional role of Vice President very well (VPs get to be a bit more outspoken than their bosses, as they both showed.) The trouble for Republicans is several fold on terrorism – polling from diverse sources show it remains a low ranked priority for Americans who do not consider themselves Republicans (jobs/economy and health reform rank higher), and Americans highly approve of how Obama is doing on the topic. Add to that Cheney’s unpopularity, and the GOP comes out worse on the exchange.

Meanwhile, the media boomlet for Sarah has run into a problem... her greed and her lack of content. This is a story that’s going to get very boring, very soon, and anything Sarah does to spice it up will only make her even more unacceptable to the 2/3 of Americans that already dislike and dismiss her. Democrats (with their dithering) are giving Republicans an opening, but it remains unclear whether they (the GOP) are capable of showing the country serious concerns about governance (and Palin, Limbaugh and Beck are poor Republican spokespeople, precisely because they’re rich at the expense of the ability to discuss serious policy.)

Unless and until we talk policy instead of simple obstructionism, Republicans remain the minority party. But that won’t help incumbent Democrats who are perceived as only being interested in Wall Street. Main Street is still angry, and incumbents are likely to feel it most. The solution? Pass health reform, financial reform and the other legislation you were sent to DC to pass. It’s the only way to get Washington back on track.

Today, Vice President Biden said of former Vice President Cheney's criticisms of the Obama Administration's anti-terrorism policies: "Our national security is not a partisan issue. I just would ask people to consider the fact that these are very serious issues for our country, and that when we take them on, we take them on in a respectful way." Vice President Biden is absolutely right. But Senator Biden seemed to hold a slightly different view. In 2005, then-Senator Biden told CBS host Bob Schieffer that the Bush Administration was "not telling the truth" about Iraq. According to this report: "(Biden) contradicted recent reassuring statements by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when he stated that the Iraq insurgency has "gotten a lot worse" and is "nowhere in the last throes."

In May 2008, Senator Biden sharply criticized President Bush for his speech to the Israeli Knesset in which Bush said: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." To which Senator Biden responded: "This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous." So much for disagreeing with the President "in a respectful way." But credit Vice President Biden for growing in office.

The Biden-Cheney debate over Iraq today asks an important question which is who deserves the credit for the emergence of a stable democracy at the heart of the Middle East. I think it is obvious that former President George Bush deserves a lot more credit than he has gotten for this huge accomplishment. I think it is also obvious that President Obama has handled Iraq and Afghanistan exceptionally well over the last year largely by following Bush policies with Bush military and defense personnel. It is also the case that both presidents made mistakes.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent too few troops to Iraq, and we did not turn the corner there until Rumsfeld was fired and the surge was put in place. Obama in turn was wrong to criticize the war on the campaign trail and to pledge a precipitous withdrawal. The real question right now should be what is our policy going to be on Iran where the clerical dictatorship is hell bent on jailing and shooting its democratic opponents while developing a nuclear bomb with which to incinerate Israel. So far President Obama has seemed frozen like a deer in the headlights. He is unwilling even to speak out publically in defense of freedom and democracy nor is he doing what Ronald Reagan would have done which is to funnel arms to the pro-democracy supporters in Iran who the regime is shooting and throwing in jail. Iran looms as the biggest foreign policy test of the Obama Administration and so far it looks like Obama deserves an F.

Had predicted that in all likelihood there would be more killing of high level terrorists than capture for interrogation and trial. That's because the administration has botched efforts to come up with a coherent program for detention, interrogation, and trial.

That's not to say that there is anything wrong with killing the enemy because we are at war....but valuable intelligence gets lost. Likewise it makes laughable the claim that this administration thinks it can fight a "better war."

If there was an issue where we ought to forge a common approach and put politics behind us this it.
No signs of that yet though.

Cautious Democrats are urging the White House against making a recess appointment of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. My fellow Politico pundit W.R. Mead agrees. But Mead and the timid Dems are wrong.

Mead argues that the fallout from a Becker appointment would be self-defeating for labor, because it would end any chance of getting the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) through the Senate. But EFCA died when Scott Brown took his seat, if it wasn’t dead already. EFCA won’t pass unless and until the filibuster rules are changed. And then, the Becker appointment won’t matter.

Becker is supremely well-qualified. He has practiced labor law for thirty years before every conceivable tribunal from the county courthouse to the Supreme Court. But Mead’s other main argument against the recess appointment is this: Becker is controversial, because unions are controversial. So, claims Mead, appointing Becker will have “negative fall-out” with the public at large. The public is not that gullible. Put to one side that Bush II appointed seven of his nine NLRB nominees via recess appointments. The White House should meet the controversy around Becker head on. It is a classic case of the “big lie”: repeat it often enough, as Senator McCain and the National Chamber of Commerce have done, and hope it sticks. But this particular big lie won’t stick, if the President is willing simply to call the Senator’s and the Chamber’s bluff. And politically, he has good reason to do so.

McCain parroted the case against Becker at the Senate hearing that McCain engineered two weeks ago. Is it not true, Mr. Becker, McCain asked, that you have represented labor unions? That you are employed by the Service Employees International Union, and that you have represented that union in scores of cases? And is it not true that the SEIU has cases before the Board? To all these menacing questions, Becker answered yes. And he added that he already had committed himself not to sit on any case involving SEIU and the other unions he’d represented for his first two years on the Board. This is the Board’s custom. But for Senator McCain it was “just not good enough.”

The big lie here is that there is anything unusual about a union-side labor lawyer being appointed. But the public won’t be surprised to learn that Republican Presidents often appoint lawyers who have worked on the management side of industrial relations; and Democrats union-side lawyers like Becker. More surprising – given the intractably divided world of labor law - is that in this case the Senate committee received letters praising Becker’s fair-mindedness and good judgment from prominent management-side attorneys who have handled cases against him.

The big lie also goes to the articles Becker wrote during his stint as a law professor in the early ‘90s. The writings are said to champion stripping employers of their statutory rights and to urge that the main provisions of EFCA could simply be read into the law without new legislation. I have read the articles, and this is nonsense. The articles claim that key purposes of our labor law have been lost. Enacted more than half a century ago, the law set out to safeguard employees’ rights to decide freely about unionization. Employers long have been violating the law with something close to impunity. That’s partly due to flaws in these old statutes and partly thanks to perverse interpretations. Becker’s articles suggest remedies. The work is painstakingly careful and judicious.

The Becker nomination offers the President a more important opportunity, what he likes to call a teachable moment. Obama can remind both the public and his own party: Unions are essential to any serious effort to put the economy back to work for middle-class America. The “working class” became a “middle class” only because a renewed labor movement in the post-World War II era pushed our economic development on to a high road of decent pay and benefits. Unions are the folks who brought us the weekend. Unions spent three hundred million dollars for Obama and the Dems in 2008. Unions are a key reason there remain substantial numbers of working-class white Americans who vote Democratic.

But unions are on the verge of vanishing. If the Dems won’t even go this far to halt the battering unions been taking, then the Dems and the nation will be the losers. For soon, we won’t have any institutional player to do the heavy lifting, to provide the serious money the Dems need to campaign for job creation, health care reform and financial regulation. McCain and company have demonized Becker simply because he’s a union lawyer. Obama should stand up to them.

Who better than Cheney to set the record straight when the Obama administration now seeks to take all the credit for the successes in Iraq. He was privy to information few others were with regard to our national security and war policy.

It is the height of hypocrisy. Both Biden and Obama were against the war in Iraq and joined their Senate Leader Harry Reid who declared the “war lost” prior to the Bush Surge. If Biden and Obama had their way there would have been NO surge and there would have been a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq. That would have resulted in a unstable Iraq and a greater Middle East. The Obama administration is essentially following the Bush policies that were set in motion long before they came to power. The Obama administration when it is convenient, blames Bush, but, gives no credit for accomplishments, like Iraq. Instead of giving credit, they take credit for actions that either took place or were put in place long before they came to power.

The Obama administrations policy of treating enemy combatants like street criminals is a shameful policy that can only embolden our enemies. Their conciliatory policy with regard to Iran has allowed them to proceed with due speed in developing a nuclear weapon and a crackdown on their own citizens who oppose their government’s provocative and dangerous policies.

As it's President's Day weekend, let's talk for a moment about that most unfairly maligned of American presidents, Warren Harding.

Harding was elected at a time when another "progressive" administration, that of Woody Wilson, had driven the American economy to its knees. The Wilson administration had driven marginal tax rates to record highs, and refused to lift wartime controls on the economy. Unemployment was in double digits; the economy stagnant. Meanwhile, Wilson's Attorney General Mitchell Palmer had also unleashed the first "Red Scare" on the American public, rounding up suspected communists, prohibiting the distribution of anti-state leaflets, imprisoning such noted Americans as Eugene V. Debs.

Harding was elected on a pledge to restore "normalcy;" that is, to end Wilson's great crusade to remake America and the world along lines of Wilson's progressive utopian dreams; to stop the harassment and intimidation of citizens that was part of the Red Scare, to simply allow Americans to get on with their lives. Harding was elected by a record landslide, and outside the anti-negro Democratic sympathies of the deep south, Harding won an astounding 70 percent of the national vote.

Contrary to popular myth created after his death, Harding was no country bumpkin dominated by party bosses. A successful businessman, his rise in politics had been fostered by his tremendous ability as a true conciliator, but he was also a shrewd politician who knew how to get what he wanted. As President, he made some disastrous appointments that would ultimately tarnish his image (especially Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, the key man in the "Teapot Dome" scandal, and Veterans Bureau administrator Charlie Forbes - but in fairness to Harding, when he first appointed his cabinet, these two appointments drew more praise than almost any other), but also appointed a remarkable number of highly talented men of strong will - Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes among them. Harding did away with Wilson's wartime economic regulation and dramatically slashed tax rates. He worked to calm and heal the nation, pardoning Debs, speaking out against lynching in the deep south (the first president since Grant half a century earlier to expend political capital on the plight of the nation's black population). The economy boomed, growing at record rates, and unemployment fell to below two percent.

When Harding died on a west coast trip in 1923, the funeral train that carried his body across the country was mobbed at every stop by people wanting to pay their respects and offer farewells. The magnificent Harding Memorial in Marion, Ohio was literally financed with dimes contributed by schoolchildren. Later, tales of corruption in the administration, mainly through Fall and Forbes, would tarnish his image, as would tales of his extramarital affairs. But as President, Harding was an enormous success. The corruption of his presidency was peanuts compared to the good that he accomplished, or compared to the damage being done to today's economy by President Obama's meddling, spendthrift, high tax, regulatory regime.

In 2012, Republicans could do far worse than to field a presidential candidate who promised a return to normalcy and acted to carry it out - a true end to the overkill of TSA searches, interfering government, villainization of dissent, growth of regulation, runaway spending, and high taxes that has marked the Bush and now even more so the Obama years.

When Bill Clinton wanted to allow declared gays and lesbians to serve in the military the man who, by his stand and his stature, put the idea to sleep was General Colin Powell, then entering the final months of his tenure as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Before audiences large and small, public and private, and in countless media interviews, Powell described the issue as one of unit cohesion and morale. Whether in the barracks or the field, he would say, the typical soldier would be made uncomfortable with the thought that the soldier next to him finds him attractive in a sexual way. And when asked-as he was by Barbra Walters during a meetings with senior ABC News correspondents and executives--if he were treatinig gays wwith the same predjudice once reserved for blacks,, Powell replied, no, race is a simple accident of skin pygmentation while sex is the most basic and compelling of human drives.

Powell's opposition killed the Clinton initiative. "Don't ask, don''t tell" was nothing more than a sop to the White House. The implementing legislation described homosexuality as "inconsistent with military service."

Now, during the presidency of Barack Obama, Powell has changed his mind. When I first heard of the change I chalked it up to the visible bitterness of his service in the George W. Bush Administration: his questions about the wisdom of going to war, his U.N. speech bulginig with inaccuracies regarding Iraqi WMD programs and, ultimately, acceptance of his resignation at the start of the second Bush term.

But I force myself to abstain from condemming Powell because I have made the same political journey with respect to gays in the military and wound up in the same place. The journey was not easy because I too would have been made uneasy at the prospect of sharing the intimacies of soldierhood with a platoon mate sexually attracted to men. But I find this outweighed by the conviction that one is entitled to be judged by his deeds rather than his propensities; that military discipline has an almost magical way of producing good behavior, and, most of all, that a young person, ready willing and able to defend his country to the death, should be given the opportunity too do so.

And so Colin, I still love you--in a fraternal way I hasten to add--and hope that your change of view on this highly emotional issue is one day regarded as just one more act in the serviice of our country.

I love Politico but am beginning to loathe politics. An entertaining story this week about the Ukraine election described a young Ukrainian entrepreneur who rented crowds for political rallies, using the latest social networking technologies. There was no ideology involved, just money for starving students who were paid to attend and wave signs, whether they supported the candidate or not. I chuckled at his creativity and refreshing openness that it’s all about money.

Money drives politics everywhere. In the U.S., the Citizens United case puts money even more at the forefront. Maybe it will spawn new businesses like the one in the Ukraine to buy votes as well as crowds. If that’s what politics has come to, then a new era of oligarchy could make a messy process even worse. Those who have accumulated personal wealth run for office; those who have been in office accumulate personal wealth afterwards; and the special interests have free reign to spend as much as they like to promote single issues which propels still other moneyed candidates into office. Where's the room for citizen participation? We're being reduced to spectators at staged events, like the ones mounted in the Ukraine for the highest payer.

Independents are on the rise as the largest political affiliation for good reason. Issues have complications; candidates can look attractive from many points on the spectrum. There is a loss of confidence in elected officials and political parties that promote their own job security rather than ours (as Obama said recently). Also, affiliations invite attacks. Being identified with a group is risky. Expressing a point of view or admire a trait or action of a politician, and the anonymous name-calling begins. If the nasty four-letter words are edited out of most Web comments, they might land in personal email Inboxes. Crowds may be wise – crowd-sourcing is the latest craze for finding new ideas – but they can easily turn into less-mindful mobs.

People who want to get things done are increasingly turning to more localized, entrepreneurial solutions. A new generation of young social entrepreneurs and community innovators are starting organizations to tackle big problems that seem daunting on a national level but possible to address on a regional level. Some of their ideas and demonstrations bear fruit and become national models. Several items in Arne Duncan’s budget for the Department of Education reflect bottom-up ideas from cities and states that Washington can spread nationally. While national health legislation bogs down, Massachusetts has a plan and is seeking additional innovations, and Michael Bloomberg is taking some visionary public health steps in New York City.

Big issues take big energy and leadership. Incumbents are dropping off like flies, apparently fatigued by the difficulties of pleasing the disgruntled. An additional small factor is seasonal. Winter weather and short days increase grouchiness and depression. It makes people tired of watching the sh-- oops, I mean snow pile up, Handling everyday tasks gets harder for everyone, and it is easier for anger and impatience to get taken out on incumbents and establishments. One can only hope that negativity fades and positive energy to tackle big issues revives with the spring.

This weekend brings an interesting alignment of events: Vancouver Olympics, Presidents Day, Valentines Day, and the Chinese New Year. 2010 is the Year of the Tiger. The tiger emerges on Sunday night surrounded by energy, leadership, and heart. One interpretation of the Chinese zodiac says that the Tiger has knowledge that can right society’s wrongs. President Obama could certainly ride that tiger at the Health Reform summit next week..

The President is offering the Republicans a “pig in a poke” in his invitation to a summit to discuss a health reform bill, already negotiated among Democrats. The Republicans would be politically smart to attend and look reasonable before the C-Span cameras. Then they should continue riling up their constituency by opposing the Democratic bill on the grounds of cost and government over-reaching. If they want to help the Democrats they should stay away and appear intransigent

One tantalizing tidbit in the summit invitation letter. After weeks of criticism of White House staff ineptitude, and Rahm Emanuel’s style and ego, the mostly invisible Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sibelius, appears paired with him as a signatory. Maybe the criticisms have stung. Stay tuned.

Next week dozens of honchos around Washington are going to be gathering to try to devise ways to ensure that ordinary working people pay for their incompetent management of the economy. This effort will pass under the guise of "fiscal responsibility."

The basic story of course is quite simple. Geniuses like Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and the rest of the country's top economists and policymakers somehow either could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble or just thought it was cute.

When it collapsed and brought down the economy, as every competent economist knew it would, it also created a serious budget problem. Now, these elites are convening special sessions devoted to fiscal responsibility in which they will devise schemes to take away the Social Security benefits that workers have already paid for and to cut Medicare. Invariably they will praise themselves for having the courage to take part in these Wall Street funded sessions to plot ways to take money from ordinary workers. And, they wonder why people hate Washington.

Dean, as I move among desperate state and local governments around the country, I constantly hear "don't balance the budget on the backs of..." The backs of whom? You mean the beneficiaries of the fiscal fiction you enjoyed in the preceding years? Likewise, Social Security and Medicare are welfare programs for all but the wealthy and upper middle class, who pay for 84 percent of all federal spending yet will receive less than 4 percent of all Social Security and Medicare benefits. The "ordinary workers" to which you refer will continue to receive far more in benefits than they paid in, no matter what the deficit commission does. But those two programs, plus interest on the national debt, will consume 80 percent of total federal revenue within 10 years. Accordingly, there will be no "taking money from ordinary workers" because the money was never there even before the recession.

Nothing apparently excites the readers of the Wall Street Journal more than a threatened “litigation explosion.” Perhaps this is because so many of the Journal’s readers are lawyers. It was only a matter of time, therefore, before they published an opinion column ominously titled, “Health-Care Reform Could Create a Litigation Explosion.” The column, written by Curt Levey, the director of a conservative advocacy organization, is one more example of the hysteria that health care reform seems to provoke on the right and the kind of misinformation that is being spread about it, particularly by the Journal.

Mr. Levey’s op ed paints a dystopia in which “new federally enforceable rights and obligations, layers of complex federal regulations, and dozens of new programs and agencies—not to mention 50 newfangled “exchanges”--… would guarantee a flood of litigation.” Levey predicts that the legislation will initially be met by litigation challenging its constitutionality, a possibility that the Wall Street Journal has been actively promoting for months. He further predicts countless procedural and substantive APA challenges by “trial lawyers—as well as attorneys for industry, the medical professions, and countless interest groups.” The greatest number of lawsuits, he predicts, will come from “individuals flexing their new-found right to essential health benefits by challenging insurance companies in court after internal appeals are exhausted.”

Health reform will also release a flood of constitutional litigation, including equal protection challenges “limited only by the human capacity to feel discriminated against.” Levey ceremonially invokes that eternal, though badly dated, right-wing bugaboo of “activist judges.” The dangerous left-wing radicals who run our judiciary will, he claims, create “a panoply of judge-made entitlements, “rights,” and federal obligations that will themselves trigger a further expansion of health-care litigation.” Apparently Levey has failed to follow recent Supreme Court decisions and thus to notice whose side “activist judges” are currently on.

It is not clear from the column that Mr. Levey has actually read the Senate bill, which will be the vehicle for health reform if reform is adopted. The bill directs HHS to promulgate rules to implement the Act. The states are then supposed to adopt laws to implement these regulations, which will in large part happen through the exchanges. If an individual is denied services by an insurer, the individual has the right under the legislation to both internal and external review. The Senate bill does not provide for judicial review of the external review decision, but presumably individuals would still have whatever rights they have under state law and employees would still have access to the courts under ERISA.

Right-wing advocacy groups will almost certainly bring constitutional challenges against the reform legislation, in particular the individual mandate. The individual mandate issue may reach the Supreme Court, which is likely to reject it by a lopsided margin, unless again recent activist appointees decide to break new ground. The other constitutional issues that I have seen raised to date are likely to thrown out quickly by the federal courts, possibly with Rule 11 sanctions for frivolous litigation.

It is very possible that interest groups will challenge some of the rules promulgated by HHS Plaintiffs are likely to include drug or device manufacturers, provider groups, and specialty or patient disease groups, who often receive support from manufacturers. These challenges are most likely to be brought under 5 U.S.C. section 706, claiming that the rules are “(A) arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” If Medicare litigation is any guide (and I think it is), the courts will realize that an intricate web of interrelated “polycentric” decisions are at stake, and are unlikely to second-guess the agency. No one can stop interest groups from resorting to the courts if they fail to get their way with the agency, but they will quickly conclude that money spent on litigation is better spent elsewhere.

Some individuals denied coverage by their insurers may well contest the denial in the state courts under the federal law, which presumably will be read into insurance contracts by the courts. Individuals will need first to exhaust both internal and external review, which should dispose of most of the cases. Individuals will sue, moreover, only when large sums of money are involved and where they either have money to pay a lawyer or can find a lawyer to take the case on a contingent fee basis. These cases are not currently that common, and I see no reason why they should increase after health reform.

One does not know what to make of Mr. Levey’s constitutional arguments. I suppose one can file a constitutional claim over anything, but unless one has a wealthy patron and an ideologically-committed lawyer, one does have to expect some prospect of success to take the chance. Every law student learns that social and economic legislation not involving a fundamental right or suspect class is subject to rational basis review in equal protection cases, which means that the plaintiff loses. Of course, one never knows what novel constitutional arguments the activist conservative judges that now populate our federal courts will find persuasive, but under current law constitutional challenges against the health reform statute will be dismissed as frivolous.

Although Mr. Levey’s opinion column is by and large the kind of hysterical commentary that plays well in the Wall Street Journal but has little to do with the real world, it does point up an important problem with the reform legislation. Procedural protections are largely missing from the Senate bill. Nowhere does it provide for judicial review.

By contrast, the Medicare statute explicitly permits judicial review for both beneficiaries, and under some circumstances, providers. In most instances, however, it only permits review once layers of administrative appeals are exhausted, a requirement rigorously enforced by the courts. Further, the various Medicare statutes establishing coverage and payment policy explicitly and specifically exempt from administrative and judicial review legislative-type decisions, including, for example, the establishment of diagnosis-related groups, DRG classification methodology, and DRG weights. Apparently judicial review was too hot a topic to handle in the negotiations that produced the Senate bill, but if we are to minimize costly and pointless administrative review actions brought by provider and manufacturer groups challenging rules made under the law, Congress would be well advised to here, as under the Medicare program, simply make many of these decisions unreviewable. Mr. Levey’s opinion piece suggests that an amendment to address this issue might attract bipartisan support.

Obama is correct when he argues that he inherited most of the economic mess we’re in, but he’s flat wrong to blame it on George Bush, or even Wall Street. Instead, a year of hindsight with the relevant financial data makes clear that the recession's cause is nothing more sinister than a grotesque overinvestment in residential real estate. More to the point, this build-and-borrow bacchanal was driven almost entirely by two powerful levers outside of the Bush Administration’s control: the interest rate policy of the Greenspan-led Federal Reserve and the mortgage purchase standards and financial underwriting practices of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration.

During 2002-2005, unusually-low short-term interest rates from the Fed and an unprecedented willingness by the federally-chartered housing entities (GSEs) to purchase or guarantee weak-credit, low-down payment and teaser-rate mortgages, led to a stunning 36 percent jump in housing prices and a tidal wave of new construction. In those years, the Fed held rates to an average of 2.5 percentage points below the level historically associated with the period’s combination of inflation and economic growth; i.e., credit was way too cheap. Simultaneously, the GSEs encouraged sub-prime mortgages (a third of all mortgages issued at the time) by scooping up millions of them, bundling them with more respectable stuff, and then shipping most of it off to Wall Street sawmills to do what they had been doing for twenty years under both Democrats and Republicans: slicing and dicing them into inscrutable financial laminates. The insatiable global appetite for these mortgage-backed securities compounded the original sins of the GSEs' top executives, whose personal wealth skyrocketed with the inflated valuation of their federally-chartered corporations’ portfolios.

In this wave of speculative leverage and euphoria, eight trillion dollars of fictitious household wealth was created, but by late 2006 the tsunami finally crested the horizon. What under traditional monetary policy and GSE practices might have been manageable risks fast became overwhelmingly large and unfathomably systemic. As the housing assets underlying the securities shrank to more rational valuations, defaults exploded, markets froze with uncertainty, and the losses launched a death march for personal and institutional balance sheets. There was nothing left to do but suffer the consequences of our hideous economic drinking binge. Even then, the speed and depth of the reckoning shocked almost everyone, as one big bank after another teetered, and the GSEs went belly-up in Uncle Sam's lap.

The dangers seem obvious now, but at the time few policymakers of either party were willing to poormouth the Wizard of Oz creators of so much household wealth, or to question the wisdom of so rapidly expanding home ownership. However, it is important to remember that as early as 2003, President Bush and many congressional Republicans began to ring alarms over the GSEs' most troubling practices, and later introduced legislation to curtail them. But the GSEs' behavior then still doesn’t get the spotlight it deserves because the congressional Democrats now chairing the relevant committees were its biggest defenders during the buy-anything years, and the general-audience media are more comfortable sticking the black hats on banks and Republicans.

It may be tempting to believe that our president at the time should have warned us of impending doom, but no one else did either. President Gore would certainly not have demanded that Alan Greenspan jack up interest rates in 2003-2005, and his fellow Democrats in Congress were too busy cheering the excesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to consider their consequences. George Bush may be responsible for more than a few failures, but the Great Recession is not one of them.

Steve, Democrats are so desparate to blame President Bush for the current recession that they've created a brand new economic theory in which tax cuts actually weaken the economy. Specifically, they argue that the Bush tax cuts created a climate of avarice that fostered the burst speculative bubble – bringing down the financial sector and triggering the current recession, which I rebutted here. Keynesian economics, which provides the intellectual underpinning for the Democrats' pro-government agenda, also postulates that tax reduction increases aggregate demand for goods, thus increasing economic activity and reducing unemployment.

They've taken their new economic theory its next logical conclusion -- raising taxes during an economic downturn will somehow strengthen the economy and reduce unemployment. President Obama's budget calls for a $2 trillion tax hike on capital gains, successful upper-income earners, unincorporated small businesses, multinational corporations, energy production, and inheritances. Raising taxes on these investors, entrepreneurs, and successful corporations is no way to foster job creation in the private sector. As the late Jack Kemp used to say: "You cannot hate the employer and love the employee."

Kevin Bomar (guest)
TX:

Kenneth Wills.. good to hear from you after all these years. (worked with Ken for 3 years, he's a good guy)
Although we are idealogically opposite, (Ken is a SFO liberal, I am a rural TX conservative), we should focus on the facts.
Ken, I'm not surprised that you're not a Fox news fan, but you should at least address the flaws and make-believe research in the IPCC reports. How noone is under criminal indictment for taking our tax dollars to do such shoddy work is unbelievable.
Fox News is biased, but I would venture to say much less so than MSNBC, NBC, and CBS.

Harold young (guest)
NY:

Mort Zuckerman

Linda Conley (guest)
OR:

My passport in hand, my daughter's too, I was in the process today of filling out our Visas for entry into India, when, guess what? A terrorist attack, this time in the city of Pune, where we were to visit my dear, dear Indian friend, Meena, aged 70, where we would stay at her home. The bombing, assumed to be part of Islamic terrorism, because on the 25th Feb, (daughter's b'day) India and Pakistan are scheduled to meet, their first meeting since the infiltration of and terrorist assault upon Mumbai in '08. Daughter and I longed to see Meena, a dearest family friend: how we love her! she whom I have known these many years, since early 1980, when I studied as an undergraduate, in Pune -traveling the subcontinent. I am sad to report I simply do not feel safe taking my precious daughter into India at this time though of course I may never see my beloved friend again. I mean, come on now! Nine people, blown apart at a "German style Bakery" near an ashram in Pune, at a specific place where foreigners frequent? Is this all these lousy cowards can do? Set off a bomb killing totally innocent civilians -blown apart in a second? Guess my beautiful daughter and will be visiting Catholic Portugal, after all... Ah, Fatima!

Tom Falk (guest)
MD:

Here's a very brief, common sense rationale on WEATHER vs CLIMATE:
Weather is what will happen next weekend; climate is what will happen over the next decades and centuries.
And while the FREQUENCY of storms (in the middle latitudes) has DECREASED as the climate has warmed, the INTENSITY of those storms has INCREASED. This also applies to hurricanes in the vulnerable areas.
That's IN PART because of global warming - hotter air can hold more moisture, so when a storm gathers it can unleash massive amounts of snow. Colder air, by contrast, is drier; if we were in a truly vicious cold snap, like the one that occurred over much of the East Coast during parts of January, we would be unlikely to see heavy snowfall.
But as far as winter storms go, shouldn't climate change make it too warm for snow to fall? Eventually that is likely to happen - but probably not for a while. In the meantime, warmer air could be supercharged with moisture and, as long as the temperature remains below 32°F, it will result in blizzards rather than drenching winter rainstorms.
Ultimately, however, it's a mistake to use any one storm - or even a season's worth of storms - to disprove climate change (or to prove it).

Bob Dee (guest)
IL:

Why do you not list your opponets? That list may be more that your website capicity.
And why do you call your friends "players"
Bush did it too Arena-----
Thats a cheap shot, thought your agenda was forget the past it's time for change. Constant blaming of past policies is only a cushion for blame for your failures.
Four years and out, what a mistake America made!!!!!!!

Richard Lester (guest)
OH:

NAFTA is a failure that apparently none of the impressive collections of Politico minds from either side of the political spectrum can see. It has had the opposite results in nearly every area and our economy is faltering as a result.
All the garbage being tossed over the fence at the other side is like counting the number of angels on the head of a pin. Identify the real problem and offer some solutions before trying to smuggly decide who is good and evil.

Kenneth Wills (guest)
TX:

Everyone should watch Jon Stewart's latest skit called "Apparent Trap". It's a revealing insight into why conservatives do not want a health care summit with Obama. You can view his material on-line. Yes, Stewart is a comedian, but he's well read and understands political nuance better than most journalists.

Karl Knapstein (guest)
CO:

Dear Barack Obama, Thanks for all the help for our wonderous state of Colorado! It amazes me the effect of the D. behind your name had on our economy in the way of gun sales, in our county of about 400,000 there are almost 20,000 concealed weapons permits (at $500.00 per) and the gun stores are always packed. Thanks again for the semi-waiver on our states Constitutional right to grow and consume medical Marijuana. This move has created almost 500 new business ventures in 500 empty commercial properties with countless spinoffs of garden suppliers, independant grower co-ops, Etc., etc.. The estimate of $50,000,000.00 in taxable sales this year is on the low end, I think, and as the revenue rolls in the public policy rhetoric slowly gets mufflled by the tune of "Happy Daze are here again! (politicians are such whores). I have one favor to ask, Barack, our small city has a power plant at its core that burns that nasty coal from Wyoming and as such spues out 220 pounds of mercury our environment. Can you make a call or something so we can direct our (yes we own it, or it owns us?) utility to burn some of the 200,000 acres of forest service trees that are already dead from fire? Jobs, Carbon neutral and the right thing to do, Thanks.

Clyde Barrett (guest)
FL:

No. The decent citizens of this great country should not participate in the sham, shameless, shambles of Health Care by this congress or any of it's leaders including Mr. Obama. It is not about Health Care in any since but about HEALTH/WELFARE SCARE - Run for your lives and your freedom, if you are young enough to do so. If you are old, as I am, I expect to get a pill any day now. GOD BLESS THIS GREAT COUNTRY!
I am not associated in any way shape or form to either side of this argument except as a "receivee" and regardless of the outcome.

Steve Perkins (guest)
VA:

Eliot Spitzer

Michael Doll (guest)
WA:

I support the President one hundred percent. I loath the pundit class that babbles endlessly about nothing. Is this 1994? or is it 1979? Who gives a crap. We are trying to dig ourselves out of a mess decades in the making. They don't care about the American people, they only care about the massive paychecks their worthless utterance derive. They are almost always proven wrong in time, yet they are never held accountable for the energy and oxygen the consume. I am sick to death of the worthless quality of opinion in this country and pray for the day that we will finally be free of these vacuous voices filling the airwaves and pages of these most difficult times that they have helped to create.

Frank Annunziata (guest)
NC:

Greetings and Salutations!
Best for NY? Me, Having run for the senate seat in NY in 2000, having experimenting in what supposedly the people clamor for, my ideas fell on deaf ears. Like rebuilding railroads, protecting the apple farmers, and making the state fiscally responsible. My plan for taxes simple, flat percentage, and everyone pays including those on welfare. Madness? No, perhaps if everyone had to go into their pocket, they would show up at an election and not vote for these who sail on the ship of fools in our congress. More importantly is to legally through the courts, begin as a State in the UNION! re-assert those state rights which have gone astray. God save the Republic, and
please Say a prayer for our guys and gals over there.

Lee (MMBJack) McCarty (guest)
NV:

Two topics need some light today: Palin. Done. She is a TV star. Dick Cheney on Sunday and Biden countering what he himself has termed "The most DANGEROUS Vice President in American History". Why would Joe Biden, as Vice President, take on such a man as Dick Cheney - a supposedly respectable past Vice President? And I might add still a Presidential challenger lurking behind his curtain to fulfill his TOTALITARIAN DREAMS. Perhaps with another Puppet. And as readers in the Arena may have noticed - certainly since the beginning of the Arena at Politico - I have stated that this man is exactly what V.P. Biden says he is - "the most dangerous man" in American political history making policy AND Presidential decisions - which he in fact did for 8 full years (less so late in the puppeteer George W. Bush Presidency) and a man that President Obama has chosen to leave to the historians and not pursue him as a war criminal and usurper of the Presidential role against the Constitution and a deviant violation of the wishes of the enlightened founders of this great nation. America is the natural leader in the world as the center of financial and military power and by our University System we remain unparalleled. But this nation needs action.

robert leleux (guest)
NY:

eleanor roosevelt!

Maggie Rheinstein (guest)
VA:

Great confession about the Palin obsession. Now do your penance and walk through the 12 step program of withdrawal as from a toxin, which is clearly what Palin is to the political scene.

Karl Lombar (guest)
TX:

To: Steve Steckler
Absolutely spot on!!!
For a couple years I was managing director of the mortgage servicing subsidiary of a very large federal savings bank. During that period it was one of the top three originating entities to Freddie and Fannie.
The governmental pound-down of underwriting standards coupled with the ever growing number of creaive teaser ARMS was the fuel that was being toyed with even back in the early 90s. What really juiced the system was the Wall Street boys joining the party with all manner of derivatives...then topped off with AIG writing insurance on the derivatives minus a little thing called 'reserves.'
And, no, the Democrats are never going own up to their significant contributions.

Hank Richards, Managing Partner - PRonlineNews.com (guest)
DC:

A major job summit occured last December. There were no tangiblre results and the summit proved to be another white house photo op. In a survey recently conducted by PRN's economic group, (data available) 62% of small businesses, indivdual investors and seniors over 55 described the POTUS as "PHONY." One example given is that he maintains "not one dime of taxes on the middle class" yet already taxed cigarettes, the UNEMPLOYED and the extra $25 in stimulus that goes out with weekly state unemployment checks - "PHONY."
Hank Richards, Managing Partner
Capital Partners Limited, LLP
Southeast Division
(256) 417-6084

Chris Sells (guest)
AL:

Aristotle.

Lee (MMBJack) McCarty (guest)
NV:

The East Coast D.C. snows and cold and climate change talk - or stated correctly the attempt by a GOP desperately trying to counter President Obama State of the Union Address and the GOP meeting in Baltimore hurriedly buried by Fox Views. (Not their primary Entertainment function) but rather there behind the scenes pulling of the GOP strings with 24/7 advertising at no charge to the GOP. A fundraiser for sure, but hey you don't charge for what you all ready are - Right? Right Wing Right? RWCP Right? Now dealing with the charges that President Obama and his Vice President Joe Biden are in cahoots with that "evil and mistaken" Al Gore "foisting upon our beleaguered Corporations" this added cost like Cap and Trade, and oh my goodness gracious these horrible people in charge of our patriotic Republican nation at its core, is besieged by nothing short of "Socialism" and really folks need to call it "Fascist" or "Communist" to really speak what they wish to impart on the American Consciousness - by repeated and monstrous lies on the exact order of Mein Kampf as the Father of all Lies who killed upwards of 50 million people Look folks the polar ice cap melting has created vast new ocean surfaces of icy water - by global warming.

Kenneth Wills (guest)
TX:

If you didn't think Fox News was a complete joke before, you ought to now. Half their staff was out cheering on the blizzard in the north east as proof global climate change does not exist. Hannity said it, Beck said it and several other Fox "contributors" (to the cause). Nothing says "cult" like being a complete reactionary and fabricating your own pseudo-science by claiming a snow storm proves there is no global climate change--and doing so as a group. So, how does the so-called "MSM" fit into all this? Well, it was conservatives that created this MSM label. It basically describes those media that do not espouse conservative bias. Apparently, Fox does not think of themselves as mainstream--which of course, makes them a fringe group. I'm inclined to agree with that position. They are a fringe group. There's a level of bias that creeps into all our perceptions, but this was just one example of the over the top fabrication of Fox News. It's time for the "MSM" and mainstream America to mark these people out for what they are: extremists so blinded by their own sociopathology thay make up their own facts to suit their beliefs. To the degree that conservatives pretend things are true to fit a prescribed dogma marks them out as a cult.

alan bernhard (guest)
NY:

Eliot Spitzer!

Monty Brown (guest)
AZ:

Mort Zuckerman. He has a clear view of the need to address the economy, jobs and budget. I have read some of his things; listened to him on several news/talk/other shows. He is articulate and can carry his perspectives in debates. He has passion for the issues and isn't in any way apparent to me just trying to balance the issues to please one faction or another. We need more people who are willing to engage openly in the needed debates about the direction of the country. For my money, he looks really good on all of these issues.

Kenneth Wills (guest)
TX:

Re: Health Summit Trap.
Obama is setting up a "put your money where your mouth is" moment for the Republicans. You could call it a "trap" if your side has nothing to offer or is just playing obstructionist. But, that assumes the summit is the trap. Politically, it isn't. The trap is already sprung. The trap isn't the Republicans going to the summit. The trap is putting them in the position having to decide whether or not to go. They're boxed in. If they don't go, is it worse (politically) than if they do go. Either way, the Republicans are going to lose and that's why they're waffling.

James Smith (guest)
AZ:

John O. Brennan made the statement that “20% of detainees transferred from Guantánamo are confirmed or suspected of recidivist activity. This includes 9.6 % of detainees who have been confirmed as having returned to terrorist activities, and 10.4 % whom the Intelligence Community suspects, but is not certain, may have engaged in recidivist activities.”
Here are some facts to chew on. 5.3 % of sex offenders are released and rearrested for another sex crime. 4 % of criminals convicted of murder in 2004 have killed again since. Guess where all of them were when they killed again. Prison.
If 1 out 5 detained terrorists returns to terrorist activities then we are personally responsible for sending enemy combatants out on to the battle field to kill our soldiers and the innocent people whom our soldiers are trying to protect. If even one of these is successful it is unacceptable.
Here is a solution: We should have flown every single terror suspect in GTMO to Haiti and in chain gang fashion forced them to help in the day to day duties of disaster relief such as recovering bodies from the wreckage, digging graves and carrying the dead to those graves etc… Nothing could soften a mans heart more than that.

Mo Montz (guest)
LA:

Peter Fenn: When the dems have a lock on both houses, how can you say the republicans are stopping progress. The reason Obama can't get is agenda passed is because you liberals know what he is doing is bad for the country and are afraid to pass it.

paul katz (guest)
PA:

A Eureka moment? S.O.S. Hillary Clinton says to a groups of students in Qutar that America now believes Iran is heading toward a military dictatorship. I guess the Israeli Navy's intercept of huge arms shipment in November was simply an anomaly, or the brutal crackdown and hanging of young democracy protesters, or the extension of their middle finger to a pacifistic overture from Obama was not enough. Whilw a Senator, Ms. Clinton was briefed on Iranian involvement in sophisticated IED's which killed American soldiers. No, anyone who believed otherwise required the correct use of the phrase Clinton pointedly, politically, and historically inaccurate leveled at an honorable man; General Petraus. I am glad Ms. Clinton, at this almost desperately late moment, has"willingly suspended her disbelief".

Jeffrey Minch (guest)
TX:

Bush/Cheney was right about the Iraq surge. Obama/Biden was wrong. Cheney's demonstrated judgment on such critical decisions is vindicated. Biden's judgment was simply wrong. Cheney strikes me as an adult on security matters. Biden strikes me as a poseur and fakir willing to say or do anything for political advantage. Their performances on Sunday talk shows confirms my impression. I will go with the adults who have demonstrated sound and correct decision-making on critical issues.

Kenneth Wills (guest)
TX:

As I mentioned in my previous post, conservatives created the term "MSM" to define those media sources that do not espouse conservative bias. It's not a surprise that a conservative comes here and claims Fox is "less biased" than everyone else given the definition I've already provided. In their minds, if you aren't espousing conservative bias, you're espousing liberal bias. There is no objectivity. It's post-modernism. There is hope, however. Bias is irrelevant to truth. So, the question is not "which news outlet is less biased." The question is which news outlet is giving you accurate information. Fox News does not provide accurate information. Instead, they provide fabricated fairy tales that fit their preconcieved notions of, for example, climate change. Absolutely no science, research or scientist denies that climate change is real. That only happens on Fox News. Truth can comport with liberl or conservative ideas. But, you can't let your ideas get in the way of truth. That is the fundamental problem with the conservative movement today. Instead of recognizing the truth they fabricate their own. Hence, snowstorms prove climate change is fake and cutting taxes for the rich creates jobs.

Rick Worth (guest)
CA:

If Cheney had (GOD forbid) still been VP with an iron grip upon the ear of the president, we would have been involved in more war by now. How the US media can prop up this coward and give him a national spotlight and microphone is beyond me. War, for you and me, should ALWAYS be an absolute LAST RESORT. After all it will be our children who die, not theirs... not Cheney's not Obama's. It is OUR KIDS who will be scarred for life. OUR KIDS who will have to slaughter on order. OUR KIDS who will pay the price for OUR SILENCE on this very very crucial decision that has historically been used for nothing more than posturing and political ratings.

George Stiller (guest)
FL:

I have talked about this economic bubble before, and how two differing viewpoints about a rally and the "gloom and doom" can both be right. However, while the coming storm affecting the economy may be a white out, it has nothing to do with snow. // Until this weekend I had not spent any time charting my economic theory because I had not found had the data I was looking for to prove it. Well, I have finally found it, and charted it in a way to make it easy to understand. // If we don't do something about this soon, the affects will be profound and lasting. Please checkout the following and let me know if it is logical and sound: http://pragmaticstatistic.blogspot.com/2010/02/this-bubble-is-going-to-burst-if-we.html
and http://pragmaticstatistic.blogspot.com/2010/02/revealing-look-at-national-debt-big.html

David Mueller (guest)
CA:

Evan Bayh retiring isn't a surprise to me. What has changed for Indiana's hard hit economy since the hope and change train rolled into town? Imagine going to work everyday and trying to explain that the boss is really out to make some positive change, while the wrecking ball smashes through your constituents homes. I think many of these politicians, on both sides of the aisle, are tired of the status quo in Washington, D.C. It is a job geared for talkers- not doers.

Richard Overstreet (guest)
VA:

Cheney won this debate by the mere fact that Biden/Obama felt he was worth debating. Former VP Cheney has enough influence not only with conservatives but with moderates, that the current administration felt it necessary to engage him. President Obama and VP Biden should realize that they legitimize Cheney's criticisms by pre-empting his arguments and then feeling the need to rebut them on another argument. Score a big one for Cheney.

Jon Davenport (guest)
TX:

Anyone else think the rash of Dem congressional retirements is insulation for voting for and passing the disastrous Healthcare bill?

Patrick Northway (guest)
IN:

Bayh the Democrat who....waitaminnit....Bayh the WHO?!!! Senator Evan Bayh, who was shooting holes in the Hull even as real Democrats were busy bailing or fluffing the pillows on the President's deck chairs has, despite his alleged allegiance, never supported the Democrats or their agenda. Senator Bayh, "Mr. Fiscal Responsibility" voted with Republicans to provide estate tax relief to heavily burdened millionaires by lifting the tax on individuals making $3.5M/yr or couple making $7M/yr. The excuse he actually had the gall to give for this giveaway was "creating jobs". The Tax Policy Center called that a bunch of horsepucky. Nice of you to give up all that revenue from starving, suffering millionaires there, Mr. Fiscal Responsibility- just what we need when the budget tanks due to a Depression. If you go to www.newsmeat.com, you'll get a pretty good idea of the political machinery behind Evan Bayh. As one of his many constituents, getting him out of office by whatever means is a plus. He is NOT a Democrat- you might as well have the GOP in that seat. At least they're honest about screwing over the Average American in favor of Goldman Sachs and Friends. Goodbye, Evan- Goodbye, Farewell and Amen...

dan hutton (guest)
MO:

Yesterday on "meet the press" Vice-president Biden told the announcer...."the master mind of the 9/11 terrorist attack will never be released from prison regardless of the outcome of his trial".....Sounds like a Kangaroo court to me. The fix is in......
What an idiot. Why have a trial at all. If you are going to have a trial to show that the justice system works, then doesnt the terrorist deserve to be given a fair trial and be presumed innocent until proven guilt.
I AM GLAD THAT BIDEN ISNT A JUDGE AT MY TRIAL.

Richard Overstreet (guest)
VA:

Cheney won this debate by the mere fact that Biden/Obama felt he was worth debating. Former VP Cheney has enough influence not only with conservatives but with moderates, that the current administration felt it necessary to engage him. President Obama and VP Biden should realize that they legitimize Cheney's criticisms by pre-empting his arguments and then feeling the need to rebut them on another argument. Score a big one for Cheney.

Steven L. (guest)
MA:

William Forbath said: "Unions are essential to any serious effort to put the economy back to work for middle-class America. "
That was a long time ago. The unions that fought for the weekend, for better working conditions, etc., were private sector unions in the manufacturing and other private industries. Most of them were NOT the public-employee unions of today. (My own dad had been a union shop steward in the shoe manufacturing industry. That industry, of course, is dead in America today.)
Today, the largest unions are the public-employee unions. They have one goal: To increase the size and cost of government so their membership will increase. They are unions of bureaucrats, fighting to expand their bureaucracies.
In that way their goals are actually antithetical to the goals of the rest of the America, and even to the goals of workers who belong to private-sector unions.
Case in point: Obama's stimulus package, most of which consisted of handouts to local and state governments to keep their unionized bureaucrats on the payroll. While the rest of us had to cope with a 10% unemployment rate.

GREG BROWN (guest)
OR:

If you call it a debate it was rather one sided. Biden had the advantage of knowing what Cheney had already said and the luxury of not being confronted by Cheney. It would be interesting to actually have a debate between Biden and Cheney where Biden could not take credit for Iraq, and where he could not blame the Bush administration on one hand and then say they followed the Bush practice on the other. I don't think Biden even believes himself but he so realishes the role of VP that he will say anything.

Toni Mack (guest)
TX:

My belated nomination for best Senate candidate from New York: Ronald Reagan

Toni Mack (guest)
TX:

To Kenneth Wills: Sir, if you get your "news" from a half-hour comedy show and disdain Fox News -- which a poll by the left-leaning PPP found to be literally the most trusted of the TV news networks -- why on earth do you believe broader-minded people have anything to learn from your posts? Many of us come to Politico's Arena to read well-informed, fair-minded views, and even provocative ones if they're fact-based and well-reasoned. Might I suggest you find an echo chamber elsewhere?

Toni Mack (guest)
TX:

The Bayh-induced panic among Democrats is both amusing and galling. “The center cannot hold” refers to Yeats’s apocalyptic poem “The Second Coming,” as if his premonition were near fulfillment: “Anarchy is loosed upon the world/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosed....” Gee, is it really that bad? Also, contrast Dems’ distress now to last year’s glee, when they held a filibuster-proof majority. Leaders snubbed “the center” of their own party, forced moderates into risky votes, and thereby fomented an angry electorate and the likely loss of Senate and House seats come November. Reaping what you sow is a – well, it’s a word banned by PC Politico which literally means “a female dog.” You get my metaphorical meaning.

Jonathan Lang (guest)
MD:

This is very much a shot-in-the-dark, but I was just thinking of the possibility that Bayh's decision could be the first step towards either a Deocratic primary run in 2012 against the President or a run in 2012 as an independent candidate. Has anyone considered this? I invite forum feedback.

mark rauchfuss (guest)
PA:

Let's take odds on the margin of votes that harry reid, stenny hoyer, barney frank and nancy pelosi will be defeated by in the mid-term elections...let's boot these donkeys off the planet.

Eric Kaplan (guest)
NY:

Cheney-Biden debate
Cheney did, and will always win this argument. Americans are not sympathetic towards terrorists. We dont want them to be granted the right to remain silent, we dont want them living in prisons in our counties or states, and most of us prefer the methods of enhanced interrogation be used when necessary. Cheney has not been a popular figure in American politics over the past decade, but he has a lifetime of experience, an has articulated an unwavering attitude towards protecting our country. This is not partisan politics for Cheney. He will fight democrats and republicans alike. This resonates now more than ever with the American people.

sly steedman (guest)
VA:

Cheney, "unchecked and unrepentent?" Yes he is, and who's to say that it is right or wrong? The issue with Liberals, is in looking back to after the heat of the battle, Libs like to decide what is right and what is wrong. No two sides to an argument, no free speech, they want Cheney reigned in. However, Americans wanted Cheney and Bush to protect us and they did.
If Liberals were running this Country at the time of 9/11 we would be snarled up in non-stop Terrorist trials wasting millions of taxpayer dollars while the bad guys in Iraq and Afghanistan watched the fiasco on TV. Liberal paralysis is clearly what afflicts this Country today, and Cheney is right to continue to defend what what set in place by the Bush administration, as in Gitmo,,,, it worked. Obama has no better strategy, but to extend a hand and we have seen what that did,, as in more attacks from AQ-ers.
Really Cheney and Biden is akin to watching Darth Vader take on the Wookie. In America's case Mr.Darth Cheney was what we needed as a Country to protect us, and his message is an ugly one but more effective than Mr. Wookie Biden's. After all war and terrorisim is ugly in itself, and one needs a Vader-istic approach to combat it and win this war on terror.

Linda Conley (guest)
OR:

Larry Sabato concludes Evan Bayh's seat was not in jeopardy but so much of what's happened this last year regarding the Obama Administration's highly publicized partisan politics screams otherwise. Mark Steyn depicts the mood of the country in a recent article. Referencing the Superbowl Audi commerical where the EcoPolice are in full form, where being a conformist "never felt so good", he writes this: "I’ve been saying for months that the difference between America and Europe is that, when the global economy nosedived, everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria mobs took to the streets and besieged Parliament demanding to know why government didn’t do more for them. This is the only country in the developed world where a mass movement took to the streets to say we can do just fine if you control-freak statists would just stay the hell out of our lives, and our pockets. You can shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless jobs bill, and your multi-trillion-dollar porkathons." How ironic that conservatives these days are the true free-thinkers! We - the enlightened ones who can do just fine without moral busybodies! C.S. Lewis wrote the most oppressive form of tyranny is one "exercised for the good of its victims." Indeed.

Laura Halvorsen (guest)
FL:

Peter Fenn said that Congress needs to get busy solving the country's problems. I say that Congress needs to stop causing the country's problems. It's easy to blame Wall Street, "big business", capitalism, greed or whatever other scape goat you choose. Those things don't exist in a vacuum. They exist under laws and regulations that Congress sets. If regulation is too lenient, that's Congress' fault. If regulation is stifling growth and job creation, that's Congress' fault. If oversight doesn't exist, that's Congress' fault. Congress loves to blame lobbyists, as if Congress is blameless. If Congress is influenced by lobbyists, it's because they choose to be influenced... usually by campaign donations. Congress talks about the government being "bought and paid for" by lobbyists, but forget to mention that they are the ones making the sale. The biggest problem this country faces right now is a selfish, power-seeking, power-hungry, deeply corrupt Congress. They have no concept of money - or that it's our money. It's just Monopoly money to them in a game called "get me re-elected". They can't be rehabilitated. They just need to be fired and replaced with someone smart enough not to take the job for granted.

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The Arena is a cross-party, cross-discipline forum for intelligent and lively conversation about political and policy issues. Contributors have been selected by POLITICO staff and editors. David Mark, Arena's moderator, is a Senior Editor at POLITICO. Each morning, POLITICO sends a question based on that day's news to all contributors.